Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Man Booker Prize 2015

Marlon James, now resident in Minneapolis, is the
first Jamaican author to win the prize in its 47-year history.

A Brief History of Seven Killings is a 686-page epic with over
75 characters and voices. Set in Kingston, where James was born, the book is a
fictional history of the attempted murder of Bob Marley in 1976. Of the book,
the New York Times said: ‘It’s like a Tarantino remake
of “The Harder They Come”, but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by
Oliver Stone and William Faulkner...epic in every sense of that word: sweeping,
mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex.'

Referring to Bob Marley only as ‘The Singer’
throughout, A Brief History of Seven Killings retells
this near mythic assassination attempt through the myriad voices – from
witnesses and FBI and CIA agents to killers, ghosts, beauty queens and Keith
Richards’ drug dealer – to create a rich, polyphonic study of violence,
politics and the musical legacy of Kingston of the 1970s. James has credited
Charles Dickens as one of his formative influences, saying ‘I still consider
myself a Dickensian in as much as there are aspects of storytelling I still
believe in—plot, surprise, cliffhangers’ (Interview Magazine).

‘This book is startling in its range of voices and
registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of
Revelation. It is a representation of political times and places, from the CIA
intervention in Jamaica to the early years of crack gangs in New York and
Miami.

‘It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of
crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about. It
moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times.’

In addition to his £50,000 prize and trophy, James
also receives a designer bound edition of his book and a further £2,500 for
being shortlisted.

On winning the Man Booker Prize, an author can
expect international recognition, not to mention a dramatic increase in book
sales. Last year’s winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep
North by Richard Flanagan, has
sold 300,000 copies in the UK and almost 800,000 worldwide. Hardback sales of The Narrow Road to the Deep North in the week
following his win eclipsed his combined BookScan sales for the previous decade.
Flanagan described the experience as ‘the most extraordinary honour… you are
fully aware that you are no longer standing in the same place you had been
previously as a writer.’

This is the second year that the prize, first
awarded in 1969, has been open to writers of any nationality, writing
originally in English and published in the UK. Previously, the prize was open
only to authors from the UK & Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and
Zimbabwe.